Microsoft patents your RSS feed.

Since Microsoft is hated four times as much as Google, perhaps they drew the short straw.

... two recently published patent applications reveal, Microsoft (MSFT) is claiming it invented RSS.

That's a long shot, however: "Prior art," the patent-law term for earlier examples of the technology in use, should be easy to show, since RSS has been around for years. The most likely outcome will be that Microsoft's patent is rejected - and no one else will be able to patent RSS, either, keeping the technology free for everyone to use.

Lawyers and the 'sue to protect' theory.